Ed Daniels and Sam Lippert. Photo: Elinor Gale.

by Elinor Gale

Do you root for favorites on Dancing with the Stars? Want to rumba or tango to a Latin beat or swing New York style? Want to enhance your social life? Worry that you have “two left feet”?

You’re in luck! Put on your dancing shoes and sign up for ballroom and Latin social dancing classes, offered by the City of Half Moon Bay. Originally a one-unit social dance class at College of San Mateo, the classes were added to the Half Moon Bay recreation program three years ago when the college lost its space for the classes. Gail Stevens, a former competitive dancer and skilled teacher, is the class instructor.

The timing is perfect, too; after summer break, beginning and intermediate classes will resume in September. Couples and singles are invited to join the dance class series on Friday evenings.

For details on times, location and cost of the fall dance series, please contact the Half Moon Bay Recreation Center at 650-726-8297.

From Box Step to Tango

In the beginning class, Stevens, a vivacious, skilled teacher, focuses on beginning patterns, technique, and leading and following skills. She starts with a fox trot, or a box or walking step that can be applied to the fox trot. In subsequent classes, she introduces other dances, gradually increasing the repertoire, repeating and incorporating steps students have learned in previous sessions.

Gloria Diaz and Keith McVicker. Photo: Elinor Gale.

“We do smooth dances and Latin dances. Smooth dances have a lot of direction and cover a lot of space, like the waltz, fox trot and tango. Latin or rhythm dances may travel, but there’s no line of dance and the rhythm and feeling is from the inside. The goal is to show the rhythm rather than cover distance. Those dances are the East Coast swing, salsa, rumba, cha-cha, samba and merengue. Then, we do the night club two-step — not the country two-step,” Stevens says.

“Some love the classes from the beginning, but people should realize everybody feels they have two left feet, and they don’t. And they won’t, and it’s fun, so I try to teach in a way that’s very supportive — break things down, repeat things, let them try it with different people. And then once we do that, I crank it up a bit to make it more interesting.”

In the intermediate class, Stevens adds new steps, techniques and dances, including quickstep, samba and Viennese waltz to vary the learning. “I don’t want anyone to get bored. Those who stick with it are really improving and look quite nice. Now, the things I say that seemed so foreign in the beginning make sense. They really want to learn about posture and connection and leading and following,” she says.

Recently, the classes have numbered 20-plus attendees, and newcomers are always welcome. Stevens would like to have more young people and suggests a young couples group come on an outing or join as a group, perhaps through the recreation department. More men are always welcome, but finding partners is not a problem. “We rotate partners,” Stevens says. “In fact, I encourage the people who come with partners to rotate, because if you get around, you’ll be better and your partner will be better. It’s good to dance with someone else, both for leaders and followers, to see how it feels with someone else.”

Instructor Gail Stevens. Photo courtesy of Kathleen Dunlap.

The Student Dancers

Stevens delights in her students: “wonderful people, diverse in age and background. Some are professionals, some students, some retired, some in crisis and just making it, but the commonality is that they’re a little bit different and adventurous and romantic. Some are into fitness and some into socializing; some have danced and some haven’t. The age range is 20 through 60s.” She quickly adds that the intermediate class includes an 85-plus-year-old man, who drives up from San Gregorio.

Visit a class and you’re greeted by friendly people, who welcome you graciously and have you dancing the merengue with them in no time. Ask why they take the classes and you hear various reasons: “for the sociability,” “to stay fit,” “something to do together,” “to be able to dance at weddings and other events.” They praise Stevens’ “passion for dance, personality, enthusiasm, skill, patience and ability to teach anyone to dance.”

The classes celebrate holidays with decorations, refreshments and sometimes costumes. They also go on outings to dance competitions as spectators and other performances, such as “Forever Tango,” the Argentinean dance group.

“It’s nice to provide a little community here on the coast,” Stevens says. “There are all different kinds of people here, hungry for cultural outlets. They really look forward to it. I’m amazed they come home over the hill on Friday night and show up for classes.”

Stevens adds that her students want more places to dance on the coast. “It would be wonderful if an area hotel had tea dancing on Sunday afternoons. It would bring people in.”

Gail Stevens

“The first thing I wanted to be was a dancer. I used to have little dances, choreograph things,” Stevens says. In sixth grade, Stevens joined a social dance class in San Jose. By Christmas, she and her partner won their first competition and were invited to train to be junior dance coordinators. Stevens spent a week that summer learning how to teach dance — including how to hold people, and how to demonstrate proper timing and the patterns of the dances.

Stevens also studied tap, belly dancing and ballet, and danced with a group at fairs and other events. She took lessons at the Starlight Ballroom in Sunnyvale and soon became an assistant. A manager, who danced competitively, danced with Stevens for free so she could compete: an amateur with a professional. She also competed with Jonathan Roberts, a professional on Dancing with the Stars.

Besides dancing competitively, helping teach dance, and taking classes, Stevens taught French for 30 years for the Newark School District and served as the French department chair. Eventually, she left competitive dancing and began teaching at the Starlight Ballroom — now the Cheryl Burke Dance Studio in Mountain View — where she currently teaches four nights a week.

Stevens is credentialed through Terpsichore, under the National Dance Council of America, and DVIDA, another ballroom dance credentialing agency. She acknowledges Gene Jennings, the organizer of the San Francisco Autumn Dance Classic, for her credential training. “He taught me what’s good about people and the history of ballroom dance,” she says. Stevens has also worked with Michael Gillon and tested with Ron Montez, emcee for Juliette Prowse and a famous Latin dancer.

Stevens says, “What makes me a good teacher is that I am a teacher and am able to apply the skills of teaching French to teaching dance.”